The present invention relates generally to bottle-handling and processing apparatus, and more particularly to apparatus for inverting, selectively, certain bottles, and conveying such bottles in a uniformly upright condition.
The present invention is concerned with the logistics of effecting the rapid transfer of an advancing random train of open end leading and closed end leading bottles from apparatus for inverting, selectively, those bottles having an open end leading disposition into a closed end leading disposition to apparatus for conveying the bottles in a uniformly upright and stabilized condition for further processing, such as cleaning, filling, packaging and storing, etc.
The prior art includes numerous disclosures of apparatus for selectively inverting certain bottles of an advancing array of bottles to provide a train of uniformly oriented bottles. The prior art also includes numerous disclosures of apparatus for conveying bottles from one location to another for purposes of cleaning, filling, packaging, or other processing. There appear to be very few disclosures in the prior art, however, directed to apparatus that can effectively, reliably and at high speed successively remove bottles from bottle-inverting apparatus and deposit such bottles in a stabilized condition on bottle-conveying apparatus that cooperates with various subsequent bottle-processing equipment.
There also appears to be a dearth of prior art directed to apparatus that can remove bottles from bottle-inverting apparatus at a sufficiently high rate so as to reliably prevent interference between bottles being removed from the bottle-inverting apparatus and bottles being inverted by the bottle-inverting apparatus.